1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an improved data processing system. In particular, the present invention relates to deployment of applications in automated data centers. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to deploying and instantiating multiple instances of applications in automated data centers using an application deployment template.
2. Description of Related Art
In a data center, resources and deployment of a distributed application or available service may be represented using a deployment plan. Deployment plans may be translated into operations needed to automatically provision or deploy the defined application or service within the data center. As described in the related patent application entitled “Method and System for Managing Application Deployment”, which is incorporated by reference above, a deployment plan may be developed containing an outline of resources and configurations used for deployment based on resource dependency characterization of application to enable deployment, logical characterization, and network characterization of desired deployment.
In particular, as described in the related patent application entitled “Method and System for Establishing a Deployment Plan for an Application”, which is incorporated by reference above, a deployment plan describes dependencies between an application's elements and physical and networking components of a deployment. The deployment plan also provides a framework of steps for realizing application deployment within a system for managing deployment of an application. The deployment plan may be established by a user provided logical application structure for an application to be deployed and a chosen application deployment template comprising a logical deployment template and a network topology template. The logical deployment template defines nodes for supporting deployment and the network topology template defines configuration elements for resolving dependencies between nodes.
In existing data center management systems, a deployment plan is used mostly to deploy a single instance of a defined application or service. No existing mechanism is present that deploys multiple instances of an application or a service using the deployment plan.
In addition, no existing mechanism is present that exposes the deployment of applications or services as a catalog item in a service catalog. A service catalog is a collection of services that users may select for deployment. With only the capability of selecting a single application deployment, it is difficult for the user to instantiate more than one application instance.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to have an improved method that deploys multiple instances of applications using an application deployment template and exploits the template to instantiate multiple service instances in automated data centers.